The Saybrook Platform was a new constitution for the Congregational church in

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

in 1708. Religious and civic leaders in Connecticut around 1700 were distressed by the colony-wide decline in personal religious piety and in church discipline. The colonial legislature took action by calling 12 ministers and four laymen to meet in

Saybrook, Connecticut Deep River is a town in Middlesex County, Connecticut. The population was 4,415 at the 2020 census. The town center is designated by the U.S. Census Bureau as a census-designated place (CDP). Deep River is part of what the locals call the "Tri- ...

; eight were

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

trustees. They prepared fifteen articles that theologically put the church in the Westminster theological tradition. It rejected extreme localism or "congregationalism" that had been inherited from England, replacing it with a centralized system similar to what the

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their na ...

s had. The Congregational church was now to be led by local ministerial associations and consociations composed of ministers and lay leaders from a specific geographical area. A colony-wide General Assembly had final authority. Instead of the congregation from each local church selecting its minister, the associations now had the responsibility to examine candidates for the ministry, and to oversee a behavior of the ministers. The consociations (where laymen were powerless) could impose discipline on specific churches and judge disputes that arose. The result was a centralization of power that bothered many local church activists. However the official associations responded by disfellowshipping churches that refused to comply. The system worked for 150 years, guaranteeing orthodox Puritanism. The Platform was conservative victory against a non-conformist tide which had begun with the Halfway Covenant and would culminate in the

Great Awakening Great Awakening refers to a number of periods of religious revival in American Christian history. Historians and theologians identify three, or sometimes four, waves of increased religious enthusiasm between the early 18th century and the lat ...

. Similar proposals for more centralized clerical control of local churches were defeated in Massachusetts, where a much more liberal theology flourished. The Platform facilitated close ties with the Presbyterians; Connecticut Yankees who moved West founded Presbyterian churches. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, ''A religious history of the American people (1972) pp 163-6, 267, 290

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Primary sources

* H. Shelton Smith, Robert T Handy and Lefferts A Loetscher, eds. ''American Christianity: An Historical Interpretation With Representative Documents, Vol. 1: 1607-1820'' (1960) pp 226-29 has the text 1708 in the Thirteen Colonies Congregationalism Connecticut Colony Deep River, Connecticut {{Christianity-stub

See also

Notes

Primary sources